“Kara, my partner, is good at picking locks. If we can find the right tools somewhere, and she can make it down here on her bum leg, it’s an option.”
“You think so?” Nathan said, hopeful.
“Yes,” Matt said honestly. “But first, I want to check the gas. Try to determine what we’re dealing with, and if I can disable the device.”
“Your partner is hurt,” Nathan said.
“Yes.” He glanced at Lily. “She’s resting upstairs now, and when we’re done here, your mom will help her.”
“Mom,” Nathan said.
“I’m not leaving you alone with a stranger,” Lily said.
“You’re a nurse. Go help her. They’re FBI agents.”
She looked from Matt to her son, clearly torn. “We don’t know that.”
“Mom, I’m okay.”
Matt said, “The faster Kara is on her feet, the faster we can get Nathan out of here.”
Lily said to Nathan, “If he does or says anything wrong, you scream and I’ll be here.”
“I promise,” Nathan said.
Lily sighed, said, “The gas canister is over there.” She gestured across the room. Matt couldn’t see anything but shelves cluttered with junk and a broken work bench.
Reluctantly, Lily went back up the stairs. Matt breathed easier.
“This has been really hard on her,” Nathan said.
“I can imagine,” Matt said. “You, too.”
“Yeah, but...” He shrugged.
“You’re a good son,” Matt said. “Let’s find a way to get us all out of this nightmare.”
He looked around. A mattress and blanket were outside the cage along with a deck of cards and a stack of Harlequin romance novels. Lily had slept down here with her son, staying by his side, because they were scared. She’d found books and a game. She was doing everything she could to hold it together after being threatened with the lives of the two people she loved most: her husband and child.
Matt looked around again, checking out the structure. For being flooded, it seemed sound. The basement was held up by thick support beams along the ceiling, and pillars roughly six feet apart went deep into the floor, reinforced with cement footings. The portion of the basement with the cell was eighteen feet by twenty-four feet, a good-sized room. It narrowed under the stairs, but he couldn’t see how far back the space went.
Along the far wall, an old furnace had been knocked off its foundation and was lying at an angle, muddy nearly to the top. By Matt’s estimate, the basement had been flooded halfway up the wall, but it had drained either naturally after the hurricane, or had been pumped out. The cracked concrete floors revealed dark, damp veins where water still seeped in from the outside.
Matt crossed the room and first visually inspected the shelves.To the left was a workbench that was missing two legs. The workbench had been completely cleaned off, and the door on the front was partly open.
He squatted, carefully opened the door. Lily had already found the gas canister, so he wasn’t worried about tripping something just yet, but it was in the back of his mind that Garrett’s partner liked to set traps and he needed to be on alert.
An army-green industrial canister was tucked into the workbench. A label had been removed, part of the corner visible, which did not identify the contents. The canister was simple: valve, ring, and safety cap. There was a stripped-down phone strapped to the canister, and wires extended from the mechanism to the safety cap.
Matt frowned at what he thought he saw and squatted to get a closer look.
“Do you know what it is?”
“No,” Matt said. “The gas isn’t labeled. Definitely a phone with wires here.”
“So it’ll kill us?”
“I don’t know. I’m not taking chances. Just give me a sec, okay?”
